Looking for Samsung Story Station 1TB repair

I paid $90 for a 1TB HDD that just failed, and it's still under the three-year limited warranty.

It held around 100 gig or so of music and written works; CDs and things that would be very difficult to replace. My question:

Is it cheaper to go through with the warranty, get a new drive from Samsung, lose my data and risk it happening again or have the drive taken apart, void my warranty, and possibly save the data? I would then re-purchase the CDs and download what I could, rewrite what papers I could.

I plugged it in one day, and it smoked; I'm thinking a resistor blew, or something simple happened, but I smell burning on it, and it still lights up, it's just not spinning at all.

I've considered freezing it; I've heard that when the components are cold, they could contract, and they disc head may spin, I'm just afraid it would take too long to transfer and it would warm up; couldn't tell you my Net speeds, but it took an hour or two to transfer onto the drive from my still-functioning Western Digital Passport...granted, that was on campus, I think. At home I don't need to throttle the speeds.

I've got CDs, vinyl, books, and personal essays on the drive. If it's disassembled, Samsung's going to be stupid and void my warranty, but I've also read that popping the drive into a PC could make it work long enough to copy over onto a backup.

I don't want to spend excess money, obviously, but the contents are important to me. What do the IT techs here think I should do? I'm willing to pay someone to get the stuff for me, and if you can do it discretely so the drive looks untouched, I'd be doubly pleased, since I could just return the damn thing to Samsung.

Sigh. Rant over. Please feel free to PM if you think you can help, and Merry Christmas.

[kydsid]

Data recovery isn't cheap. But Samsung has data recovery partners. You pick who is going to recover the data and pay for that service while still being able to get your drive RMA'd.

http://www.samsung.com/global/busine...aRecovery.html


Then after that, get another drive and use a raid1 backup system.

[Volt]

First off - sorry for the issues. As an IT guy here who has had to look at data recovery before, most warranties cover the hardware not the recovery. With that said, once you send it in, it's prolly done. Data recovery by experts is incredibly expensive, so much so my company will not pay for it (prior to my arrival). Think $1000s.00.

1. Regardless as to what you do, have another drive ready to recieve the data if you can get it to spin. You may only get one shot and it needs to be fast.

2. You can try freezing, but if you smelled burnt components - I'm gonna bet it's done. Even if you could replace them, you would need to determine whether the part failed or it was due to another issue.

3. If it is worth $300 to fix and you like to tinker. Buy the exact same drive. Yank the electronics out (destroys this drive) ($100). Put them in the old drive (voiding the old warranty $100)) and see if it will spin up. Have a new drive ready to recieve the data if it works ($100). Absolutly a 1 time shot and with the heads and platters so snsitive to dust once opened?????? Good project if you have the time. $300 might be cheap depending on the value of the data you have lost at this point.

4. Try the data recovery route as posted above.

I can't think of much else if it will not spin. If the hardware was functional there are many ways to get data, but is has to spin.

Not to toss salt in your wounds, but a general note to all who do not backup. In this day and age there is no reason not to have a backup device. Threre are some external drives so customized all they do is back up, just point, click the installed software and forget. For the minor geeks, setup a RAID 1 (I use both). There is just no reason not to protect what ever is important other than laziness.

[Warning: I go off-topic a little]

I was actually a day away from reverting/backing up everything back to my faithful WD 250 Passport - my first one, I dropped, and it killed the platter, but since I bought a second one, and keep it in a case, I trust it as much as my laptop HDD, which I need to back up, I know. I don't consider myself lazy, I just getting my finger in too many pies at once.

I planned on buying a blu-ray writer and burning the songs, maybe just DVD even - after Christmas when I had money - stupid Wal-mart, but that's another thread, trust me lol

I've got a guy that charges me fairly compared to what I've seen online - I know it's pricey, and he's essentially just gonna do what you suggested I think, Volt, tear it down and build it back up.

I'm not touching the damn thing, I don't trust myself. Hell, I don't even 'safely remove drive' before disconnecting an external half the time, because Windows tells me that it can't stop the operation for me to do so - why? I often see the drive listed, plus the drive letter listed, too. Both of them sometimes it cannot stop it's telling me.

FML...google that if you don't know it, anyone.

And thanks, Volt. I'm just pissed over this, plus my phone died, so I had to buy a new one, Verizon's not gonna credit me for the days I missed not having one, I've got body pains from my CP, a surgery soon, and I've dropped school worries at the moment. I'm out of school, I kind of miss it, even if it sucked, and my grades are low. My mom's got a lot of issues stressing her at the moment, and I'm low-tier I hope, but I'm sure I add to it.

Without music, I really do go nuts, and I wish Verizon had bought the iPhone rights. I love my Touch, and I love my cell. But I digress. All cellular companies are BS in my opinion. To their credit, customer service was prompt, and "Gary" was polite and helpful, to a point.

So yeah, as for the hard drive, the guy's gonna recover it and take care of it me; probably using the same damn software I saw Ontrack selling. And there's an article in PC World showing that fire-burnt drives can sometimes be saved; they essentially roasted a platter.

I've researched it, I understand the fragility of it, and of data, and if I weren't so mad currently, I might be interested in some hobbyist hacking and DIY work.

-Smiles- Thanks again folks. Merry Christmas. Don't let people like me darken your view of the world. Bah humbug, as he said and Volt, I may PM you shortly with some other questions, if you don't mind.

Again, God bless, or whatever I can say that is politically correct.